


words meant just for you

by scrubclub



Series: AryaxGendry Week 2018 [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 03:56:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15428502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrubclub/pseuds/scrubclub
Summary: Written for AryaxGendry Week Day 4: "Eavesdropper"A collection of Arya and Gendry's conversations overheard.





	words meant just for you

The stables they slept in were damp and smelled of horseshit. Whatever Yoren had paid the landowner, it had been too much. Lommy would rather have slept out in the woods again. There was hardly enough room for them all in here, forcing Lommy to be squished between Hot Pie and Arry. At least Hot Pie was soft - Arry’s bony elbows were digging into Lommy’s back, making comfort all but impossible. 

Hot Pie snored beside him and Lommy closed his eyes, desperately hoping for sleep to find him. 

“What will we do if the gold cloaks catch up?” Arry asked, so quiet that Lommy was sure he wouldn’t have heard him had they not been packed in right against each other. 

“They won’t,” came the Bull’s husky voice in reply. He was also whispering. 

“But -,” 

“They won’t,” the Bull whispered, quieter this time, “You’re going to get home.” Lommy felt himself smile at this. He fell asleep imagining a return home to King’s Landing. 

-

Hot Pie woke up from his nap to see his companions a few yards away, Arya standing in the stream practicing with her stolen sword and Gendry sitting on a rock, sharpening his own stolen weapon. Hot Pie closed his eyes again, hoping to maximise his rest time. 

“I miss Needle,” she said, “This one’s too big.” 

Gendry hummed in agreement. “The Braavosi blade was a good choice for someone so tiny.” There was a splash and Gendry laughed, “I’m serious! You’re not big enough for a man’s sword yet.”

“My brother gave it to me.” For a moment, there was only the sound the stream. Hot Pie opened his eyes and watched Arya twirl the blade from Harrenhal in her hands. “He was a bastard, too.” 

Gendry looked up, surprised. 

“He was my favourite,” she said, stepping into a fighting stance.

Gendry smiled. 

-

The children sat by the fire, the girl holding her knees to her chest. 

“I’m sorry about your friend,” the boy said, “The butcher’s boy.”

The girl did not reply. 

“It was good of you to say something,” the boy carried on.

“It doesn’t matter that I said anything,” she spat.

“It does.” 

Thoros watched them through the flames, smiling sadly as the girl swept a tear from her cheek. 

-

Lady Crane watched the girl sleep fitfully, delirious from the milk of the poppy that soothed her pain. 

 

“Home,” she said, her eyes still firmly shut, “I need to go home.” She called for her mother once, and whispered for her father. She murmured about going North. As dawn broke, she had settled, breathing steadily. 

“You’re going to hurt him,” the girl said, startling Lady Crane as the sun rose. She furrowed her brow, twitching slightly. “You’re going to hurt him.”

-

When the dragons arrived at Winterfell, almost no one could look away. 

One exception was Gendry, a blacksmith, a bastard, a man fallen to his knees in front of a friend he’d thought he had lost. “You’re alive.”

Another was Arya Stark, staring into a set of familiar blue eyes, reaching out to touch his face, desperate for proof that he was real. 

The third exception was Bran Stark, watching two lost friends collapse into a hug. 

-

 

It was midday by the time Sansa approached the forge to update her records of Winterfell’s weapon supply. The new blacksmith was an angry man. His face was handsome but almost always trained into a scowl and he hammered the weapons with such force that any passerby might assume that the steel had sprouted a mouth and said something deeply offensive to him. 

Sansa figured that it did not matter that he was a surly man - he was only the blacksmith, after all. When the war was over, the need for weapons less urgent, and his expertise less necessary, she would not need to speak with him so frequently.

She had expected the usual sound of hammer hitting steel, or perhaps the hiss of hot metal in cool water. Instead, she heard a laugh. She stopped, shocked. Sansa had not thought the man capable of laughter. What she hear next surprised her even more. 

“It’s true!” It was her sister’s voice, more cheerful than she had heard it in years, “he’s happy as anything, making pies and serving ale where we left him.” 

“That’s good to hear. D’you think he’s any better at making that wolf-bread?” the blacksmith laughed. Arya giggled - _giggled_ \- along. 

“Don’t be mean.” 

“You’re the one who asked him what it was to his face.” And they laughed. 

Sansa had known that Arya and the blacksmith had travelled together years before. When Jon had returned to Winterfell, Arya had spoken the blacksmith’s name - Gendry, if Sansa remembered correctly - and he had fallen to his knees in front of her. Sansa had assumed that he was offering her his sword in fealty, and her attention had been swept away by the arrival of Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons. Now, she realized, their reunion might have been more intimate than an oath of loyalty. 

Sansa approached the open door and peeked inside. They were sitting together on his worktable, her sister looking positively tiny beside his huge frame. He was eating a bowl of stew and a board of bread and butter sat to his side - Arya must have brought his lunch to him. Sansa thought of the man she had interacted with, grumpy and reluctant to answer any question with more than one word or a simple nod. Here he sat, allowing Arya to share his bread and knock her knee against his, his face alight, smiling, trained on Arya’s. 

-

The war was won and Winterfell’s courtyard was chaos. There were bodies - dead and alive and barely alive, tears - joyous and heartbroken and somewhere in between, and desperate cries for cloth and furs and bandages. Jon walked through the crowd in a haze. He caught a glimpse of Sansa’s red hair rushing to Lyanna Mormont’s side, saw Jaime Lannister limp by, held up by Podrick Payne. There were too many missing faces The smell of death was everywhere. It hardly felt like a victory. 

He came upon Arya and Gendry slumped against the wall. Arya was bandaging the smith’s hand, wiping the excess blood away with her sleeve. 

“You’re an idiot,” Arya said, her voice oddly soft, “You could have lost your hand.” The boy shrugged. 

“Better my hand than your life,” he said, reaching out with his uninjured hand to wipe a smear of blood from her cheek. It was intimate and the most delicate Jon had ever seen Arya. Jon watched his little sister’s small smile for a moment longer before stepping away, not wanting to interrupt. 

He would have to speak with Gendry about this, and Arya too. Sansa would have her opinions on the match, he was sure. But the complicated discussions about propriety and weddings and titles and lands could wait a day or two. Today, he left them in peace.


End file.
